EXPOSED: Guatemala’s Narco-Corruption Swamp Festers Under Bernardo ‘Maduro 2.0’ Arévalo

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo has emerged as the new Maduro of Latin America after rising to office through Biden-backed election fraud.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo has emerged as the new Maduro of Latin America after rising to office through Biden-backed election fraud. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi drew attention to the role Arévalo’s government plays in facilitating the drug trade during an appearance on Fox Noticas last year.

“There is an air bridge where the Venezuelan regime where they pay to have free airspace access undetected to Honduras then Guatemala and to Mexico where they can traffic these drugs, transport these drugs. They are exchanging money for bribes. They are exchanging weapons for the ports of entry and airspace to get these drugs to all these other countries and into the United States,” AG Bondi said.

Earlier this year, three separate prisons were overrun by inmates as chaos consumes Guatemala under Arévalo’s watch. The inmates took 46 hostages in an attempt to gain freedom for Barrio 18 gang leader El Lobo. After El Lobo was subdued and the weekend’s prison revolt was put down, police officers were targeted in a murderous retribution campaign throughout the capital of Guatemala City. At least seven police officers were murdered with ten others injured as the national murder rate soars under Arévalo’s derelict leadership.

Arevalo was elected purportedly to bring an end to the corrupt narcostate in Guatemala, but countless officials with ties to the drug trade or other corrupt dealings are still running rampant under his administration.

The only officials who are targeted are those with the potential to bring Guatemala in a more conservative direction, similar to Bukele in El Salvador, Milei in Argentina, or El Tigre in Colombia. One such example is Carlos Pineda, the businessman and outsider who captivated the imagination of the Guatemalan people only to be tossed off the ballot in the 2023 presidential election and then denied a U.S. visa due to a vicious and baseless whisper campaign meant to impugn his reputation.

The political class in Guatemala is dirtier than ever as narco violence reaches epidemic levels under the Arevalo regime. Still, he puts on a mask and attempts to portray himself as a friend to the Trump administration who is marching in lockstep on key initiatives when nothing could be further from the truth.

These are Arevalo’s Guatemalan swamp files:

Amílcar Aleksander Castillo Roca

Amílcar Aleksander Castillo Roca (also referred to as Alexander Castillo) is a Guatemalan former legislator primarily associated with the Partido Patriota (PP), the party of former President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti, both who were later imprisoned on major corruption charges. He served as a deputy and as First Secretary of the Junta Directiva of Congress during the 2014–2015 period under President Arístides Crespo.

His most significant documented involvement is the “Plazas Fantasma” (phantom jobs) case investigated by the Fiscalía Especial Contra la Impunidad (FECI) and the now-defunct CICIG. Investigators found that during his time on the Junta Directiva, Castillo and others authorized irregular hiring of personnel, putting advisors and temporary staff illicitly on the dole.

In March 2017, a judge linked him along with several of his deputies and former deputies for abuse of authority and embezzlement by extraction. He was initially detained and later placed under house arrest over the charges. This ultimately prevented him from returning to Congress. After years of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, Castillo was able to get the case dismissed before it could go to trial.

Jorge Arturo Reyes Ceballos (“El Canche Reyes”)

Jorge Arturo Reyes Ceballos, widely known as “El Canche Reyes,” has been the continuous mayor of Cuyotenango, Suchitepéquez, since approximately 2000 (first elected for the 2000–2004 term). This career politician has held the office across multiple fronts and is one of the longest-serving municipal executives in the country. His longevity is due to controlling distribution lines of key goods (especially eggs) and local political machine control.

Investigative outlets have documented extensive egg purchases for distribution to low-income residents and the elderly—keeping the population dependent. From at least 2015 onward, the municipality spent millions of quetzales on eggs via low-value contracts that avoided competitive bidding. Several audits have flagged irregularities, such as a Q968,000 rural road contract lacking proper publication, supervision reports, and liquidation acts.

El Canche Reyes has been dogged with credible allegations of corruption, abuse of authority, and narco ties. Allegations of narco connections come through his previous connection with the UCN party. UCN leader Mario Estrada was extradited to the U.S. and later convicted on drug charges for his actions aiding and abetting the Sinaloa Cartel’s drug-trafficking activities.

Jorge Estuardo Vargas Morales

Jorge Estuardo Vargas Morales served as a municipal councilor in Puerto Barrios, Izabal, and held senior roles at the prestigious Empresa Portuaria Nacional Santo Tomás de Castilla. He entered Congress in 2016 with the Partido de Avanzada Nacional and was reelected in 2020 with the UNE. He has been identified as a key UNE figure close to Sandra Torres’s circle.

In July 2021 he was added to the US Engel List (Section 353) of corrupt and undemocratic actors for significant corrupt acts, including bribery, coercion, and influence peddling that undermined democratic processes. In December 2022 the US Treasury’s OFAC designated him under the Global Magnitsky sanctions program (Executive Order 13818).

The designation describes him as one of several individuals at the apex of a network designed to control contracts and operations at government-run ports for personal profit. Morales’ control of the ports have allegedly allowed him to facilitate the illicit narco trade. His ambitions have included continued legislative influence and regional parliamentary office.

Nery Abilio Ramos y Ramos

Nery Abilio Ramos y Ramos is a former police officer who rose to become Director of the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) before entering elective politics. He was elected to Congress for Jutiapa in 2023 with the Partido Azul. After the Constitutional Court blocked Semilla members from congressional leadership positions and annulled the initial election of Samuel Pérez, Ramos was elected President of Congress in January 2024 with 115 votes and no opposition. His candidacy received decisive support from Arévalo-aligned forces.

Ramos served as Congress president through early 2026 and then became First Vice President under Luis Alberto Contreras Colindres. He later helped form the party Firmes (previously associated with a “Revolución” branding). He is widely viewed as a potential 2027 presidential contender within that vehicle. He is closely linked to a criminal network associated with drug trafficking that operates from the Honduran border to Mexico. Along with his brother Osbin Ramos. Exploiting his reach within the PNC, they take advantage of limited police coverage to transport narcotics with a lower risk of interception. He reportedly conspired with drug lords to crackdown against journalism exposing their illicit connections.

Jairo Danilo Orellana Sandoval

Jairo Danilo Orellana Sandoval, known publicly as “Pollo,” is a congressman representing Jalapa for the 2024–2028 term. He has chaired the Comisión de la Defensa Nacional. In that role he has overseen work on infrastructure-protection bills, military pension reforms (IPM), and related legislative initiatives.

He has been linked directly to congressman Luis Fernando Aguirre Estrada, “La Yegua”, an leader of an illicit drug trafficking structure. In 2023, his father-in-law, Milton Guerra, was violently murdered by an armed hit squad. Other family members have also been the target of attacks with the prevailing wisdom being that these hits were ordered by rival drug gangs.

Carlos Roberto Marroquín Fuentes

Carlos Roberto Marroquín Fuentes has been mayor of Moyuta, Jutiapa, since 2012. He was first elected with UCN, the party led by convicted drug criminal Mario Estrada. He is the brother of Jorge Marroquín Fuentes, who was captured in El Salvador in 2017 while transporting approximately 840 kg of cocaine (valued at over $21 million) and later sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In January 2026, video circulated of Marroquín publicly threatening PNC and Ministry of the Interior personnel, warning that if patrols or investigators came too close he would “sneeze a couple of rifles” at them. He was accused by Marixa Ethelinda Lemus Pérez, known as “La Patrona”, of the murder of her sister, Mayra Verónica Lemus Pérez, when they were competing for the mayor’s office in the 2011 general elections. According to La Patrona, Marroquín’s ultimate goal is to control the territory in order to move cocaine shipments that he collects from the beaches of Moyuta and transports to Mexico.

Luis Alberto Contreras Colindres

Luis Alberto Contreras Colindres has been a San Marcos deputy continuously since 2004. In November 2025 he was elected President of Congress for 2026–2027 with 149 votes, succeeding Nery Ramos (who became First Vice President). The election received support from a broad range of blocs, including forces aligned with the Arévalo administration.

In August 2026, independent journalists publicly alleged that Contreras, together with Roberto Arzú García-Granados, was involved in planning an attack on the journalist and his team, with participation of narcotics figures and meetings at various properties to hatch the illicit plot. He has been accused of providing political control for the operations of drug-trafficking criminal structures operating out of San Marcos known as “Los Pochos”.

Jorge Rolando Pérez Domingo

Jorge Rolando Pérez Domingo is the mayor of San Miguel Ixtahuacán. In early 2025 the Ministerio Público requested the revocation of his governmental immunity in connection with an operation against a migrant-smuggling network known as “Genoveva.” The network actively recruited migrants in Guatemala and other countries, charging substantial fees for their journey north before it was busted up last year.

The request cites alleged participation in events involving instigation to commit crime, membership in illegal groups, aggravated robbery, kidnapping or plagiarism, and assault, during which investigators were reportedly detained and attacked. He allegedly helped to funnel migrants to a hotel and restaurant before providing them with illegal transit toward Mexico and the United States.

Jorge Antonio Orellana Pinto (“El Congo”)

Jorge Antonio Orellana Pinto, known as “El Congo,” is the former mayor of Guastatoya, El Progreso. He was first elected in 2015 and is reportedly eyeing a congressional candidacy in the future. In 2023 a close associate and municipal candidate, Byron Orellana Véliz (“Nito”), was arrested for extradition to the United States on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine with the operations alleged as occurring between 2005 and 2021 as a receiver of Colombian shipments. Nito appeared on the same slate that ran El Congo for Mayor.

Francisco Morales Guerra

Francisco Morales Guerra is the mayor of Dolores, Petén. In February 2026 his three brothers—Carlos Obeniel (Ottoniel Obediel), Ronald Alexys, and Héctor Rubén Morales Guerra—were captured in Petén. All three were extradited by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on charges of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine with the intent that it be imported into the United States (alleged operations spanning South, Central, and North America from 2006 to at least 2024).

Thus far, Guerra has not been charged as being part of the family business. In February 2026, Marvin Rolando Cruz, former mayor of Dolores, Petén, was murdered. Perhaps this is a sign that those who know too much about the Guerra brothers’ cocaine cartel are being eliminated before they can talk to federal authorities.

Luis Fernando Aguirre Estrada

Luis Fernando Aguirre Estrada is a national-list deputy and, since November 2025, Secretary General of the Cabal party. He has served as chief of the Cabal bancada—their legislative unit—and has been a central organizer of his party’s territorial structure and 2027 positioning. Estrada gained infamy for his closeness to José Manuel López Morales, alias “Che Manuel”, who was sentenced in the U.S. to 11 years in prison for drug trafficking. Aguirre presented an award to Che Manuel in Congress in 2024. Che Manuel was the link in Chiquimula between the Honduran Valle cartel and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel. Estrada was also an alleged participant in meetings along with Aguirre, Nery Ramos, César Fión, Luis Contreras, and others where violent retribution against journalists reporting on narcoterrorism was discussed.

Roberto Arzú García-Granados

Roberto Arzú García-Granados is a former presidential candidate in 2023 and the son of former President Álvaro Arzú. He briefly joined the Cabal party in late 2025 as Secretary of Political Formation under Luis Aguirre before departing amid internal purges. Audio recordings leaked to the media revealed the closeness and ties between Arzú and Francisco Edgar Domínguez Higueros, alias “Paco”, leader of Los Caradura, a gang dedicated to street-level drug dealing and kidnapping in Guatemala City and surrounding departments.

According to leaked documents, “Paco” granted Roberto Arzú a loan of $700,000 and four million quetzales (Q4,000,000.00). Additional documents link Roberto Arzú to Marllory Dadiana Chacón Rossell, alias “La Reina del Sur”, sentenced in the United States for laundering money for Mexican cartels, who according to the documents allegedly gave Arzú, through her operator Rodrigo José Lainfiesta Rimola, the sum of one million dollars.

Esduín Jerson Javier Javier (“Tres Kiebres”)

Esduín Jerson Javier Javier, known as “Tres Kiebres,” is the former mayor of Ipala, Chiquimula. InSight Crime’s 2017 investigation documented long-standing associations with figures later identified as major narco traffickers (including Merlin Yovani España) and placed him as a key figure in narco trafficking on the eastern side of Guatemala. In 2021 the Ministerio Público sought to lift his immunity in the “Narcotráfico Municipal” case, linking him to a structure tied to the January 2020 triple murder that followed a boxing match with Mixco mayor Neto Bran, and to the seizure of more than $800,000.

Additionally, in 2014, the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s Anti- Narcotics Prosecution Unit linked Tres Kiebres to the structure of Juancho León, local drug-trafficking cartel operated by Byron Berganza Espina. Berganza, a native of Ipala who is linked to the so-called Ipala cartel, was captured in El Salvador in 2003 by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and sentenced in 2008 to 22 years in prison for drug trafficking.

Sandra Carolina Orellana Cruz

Sandra Carolina Orellana Cruz is a Zacapa deputy who has served as Second Vice President of Congress and chaired the Women’s Commission. In April 2025 her motorcade was attacked while returning from an event in La Unión although she was unharmed. She represents the ECN Party founded by convicted drug criminal Mario Estrada.

Investigative reporting has documented her controversial use of a 2024 Lexus LX600 (market value over Q1.1 million) registered to Francisco Benjamín Cardona Díaz of Construfrank, a firm that has received approximately Q129 million in municipal contracts with the owner being the son of the mayor of San Pedro Soloma. This blatant conflict-of-interest shows exactly how Orellana does business.

Winter Coc

Winter Coc is the former mayor of San Pedro Carchá, Alta Verapaz. After leaving office Coc has reinvented himself as a social-media influencer, fertilizer seller, and occasional actor. Reporting has noted a non-transparent contracting process throughout his administration (including a road project that was later audited) and frequent distributions to cronies (cuts of cloth, fertilizer), including allegedly exploiting church services to give government handouts to buy votes.

Local media sources link Coc to Cristhian Estuardo Vaidés Fión, alias “El Tuerto”, charged by U.S. authorities with trafficking more than five tons of cocaine per month into that country. Vaidés Fión was in charge of coordinating the transport of cocaine, which was packaged in Colombia and then brought into Panama and on through Central America and Mexico, bound for the United States.

Sandra Julieta Torres Casanova

Sandra Julieta Torres Casanova is the long-time leader of the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), three-time presidential candidate (2015, 2019, 2023), and former first lady. She remains the dominant figure in one of Guatemala’s largest opposition machines. UNE has been repeatedly linked in investigative reporting and US assessments to clientelist networks, municipal machines, and, in some territorial cases, organized-crime exposure. She is the aunt of María Martha Castañeda Torres, partner El Lobo, who was identified as one of the ten top leaders of the “Barrio 18” gang and sentenced to more than 80 years in prison for various Narco-related crimes.

Sofía Jeanetth Hernández Herrera

Sofía Jeanetth Hernández Herrera is a Congresswoman who served under the UCN Party, founded by narco Mario Estrada. She is the aunt of Augusto Jean Carlo Castillo Hernández, who was found guilty in a court in the Southern District of California of conspiring to participate in coordinating the distribution of at least 2,000 kilograms of cocaine — more than two tons — which crossed the border into Mexico and ended up in the United States.

Vivian Beatriz Preciado Navarijo

Vivian Beatriz Preciado Navarijo is a Congresswoman who was elected and reelected with the UCN. In 2010 she was detained in connection with allegations of obstructing justice by assisting Víctor Hugo Soto Diéguez (a figure in the Pavón case) to flee but the case did not result in a final conviction that barred her political career. She is the sister of Carlos Danilo Preciado Navarijo, who was arrested by Interpol in Panama in an extradition proceeding requested by the United States for drug-trafficking-related offenses. She is also the niece of La Tía, who was arrested in 2011 and later sentenced in the United States to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking.

Edilma Elizabeth Navarijo de León

Edilma Elizabeth Navarijo de León is the long-serving mayor of La Blanca, San Marcos (previously mayor of Ocós for multiple terms). She and her daughter Vivian have maintained dual municipal-congressional control in the coastal border zone with Mexico, a strategic location for drug trafficking, with her family maintaining control over the region for two decades. She is the mother of Carlos Danilo Preciado Navarijo, former mayor of Ocós, San Marcos, who was arrested by Interpol in Panama in an extradition proceeding requested by the United States for drug-trafficking- related offenses.

Andi Natanael Pacheco Vásquez

Andi Natanael Pacheco Vásquez is the current mayor of the municipality of Usumatlán, department of Zacapa. He is currently linked to Nery Ramos’s FIRMES political organization, and is also linked to Haroldo Waldemar Lorenzana Terraza, alias “Haroldito”, who is wanted by a District of Columbia court for being identified as a leader within a drug-trafficking criminal organization, along with his parents, uncles and grandfather, some of whom have already been extradited to the United States. U.S. authorities are currently offering a reward of 38.5 million quetzales for information leading to the whereabouts of Vasquez’s associate, Haroldito.

These are the individuals who constitute the deep narco state in Guatemalan politics that needs to be brought to justice. Due to his weakness and/or complicity, President Arevalo and his allies have proven severely ill-equipped for the job. They are taking aim at populist outsiders with the potential to produce lasting change in Guatemala while ignoring the corrupt narco-affiliated elements running wild throughout the country. The Arevalo regime is doing this in a desperate attempt to keep their grip on power and maintain the status quo in Guatemala just long enough to hopefully outlast the Trump administration. This cannot be allowed to occur for the Donroe Doctrine to be successful in eradicating communism throughout the hemisphere.